What is so sexy about the biological today? Is artistic product as fickle as our hollow markets? Worse still, is artistic product just an aid in the panic diversion of cash flows? Is art just another way to lure press coverage away from our mismanaged Computer World? Are the technologies of Cloning, Transgenics and Genomics just charismatic suck-holes seducing faux-independent art exploration? Are our artists slaves to the rhythm of the latest big boom/bust bubble, the biotechnological fad market? I would say yes, often yes. Sometimes bioart is a gateway drug, the road to harder drugs, war, creative accounting, fraud and dashed dreams. Some artists are like unwitting pimps and pushers, hooking dupes of waning cultural capital on the next ‘born to lose’ high-risk venture.

Subtle Tech is an ambitious festival that always provokes some kind of crazy-assed interdisciplinary discussion. I go mostly for the Q&A sessions, where artists and scientists try to find common ground (and often and fail and sometimes go at it tooth and nail...and I know, I know...that's not supposed to be the idea - it's all about sharing concepts and playing nice. But hey, why should the dialogue between two different disciplines always be conflict-free? Let's get into it!)

I love big artist run site-specific projects. The quality isn't too uneven, a few duds, but more surprises than I expected. Heather Nicol's sound & light piece, In the Trenches, is exquisite and makes great use of a small arched opening that reads as a gravestone made out of negative space. (no photo will do it justice).

Paulette Philips' Bridge of Sighs is another jewel that can't be photographed well enough to post here. (I tried)

Rob C. put me onto this crazy stuff about "imaginary" colours. As a result of our subsequent conversation he sent me this most excellent gif. It's based on a drawing by René Descartes.

I actually read Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy not that long ago. It was really worth it...especially because I had no idea that the whole thing is awkwardly framed as proof of the existence of God!! Poor guy. It sucked to be into science back then. The first section of the book is a letter to the Dean and Doctors of the sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris asking for endorsement.

I have always thought that two topics — namely God and the soul — are prime examples of subjects where demonstrative proofs ought to be given with the aid of philosophy rather than theology. For us who are believers, it is enough to accept on faith that the human soul does not die with the body, and that God exists; but in the case of unbelievers, it seems that there is no religion, and practically no moral virtue, that they can be persuaded to adopt until these two truths are proved to them by natural reason.

"I want a feminist writing of the body that metaphorically emphasizes vision again, because we need to reclaim that sense to find our way through all the visualizing tricks and powers of modern sciences and technologies that have transformed the objectivity debates. We need to learn in our bodies, endowed with primate color and stereoscopic vision, how to attach the objective to our theoretical and political scanners in order to name where we are and are not, in dimensions of mental and physical space we hardly know how to name."
[Donna Haraway, “The Persistence of Vision,” in The Visual Culture Reader, Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed., (London: Routledge, 1992) p.678]

"It is in that languidly unreeling pulsation, that hypnotically erotic, visual throb of Duchamp’s Precision Optics, that one encounters the body of physiological optics’ seeing fully enmeshed in the temporal dimension of nervous life, as it is also fully awash in optical illusion’s ‘false induction.’ But it is here, as well, that one connects to this body as the site of libidinal pressure on the visual organ, so that the pulse of desire is simultaneously felt as the beat of repression." [Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge, MASS & London: The MIT Press, 1998, c.1993) p.138]

"The cerebral cortex is not above the body in an ideal or ideated remove; it is, instead, of the body, such that the reflex arc of which it is a part connects it to a whole field of stimuli between which it cannot distinguish." [Rosalind Krauss, ibid., p.124]

"The nervous system is not contained within the body’s limits. The circuit from sense-perception to motor response begins and ends in the world. The brain is thus not an isolable anatomical body, but part of a system that passes through the person and her or his (culturally specific, historically transient) environment. As the source of stimuli and the arena for motor response, the external world must be included to complete the sensory circuit." [Susan Buck-Morss, "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered," in October, no. 62 (Fall 1992) p.12]

Note: you can blame L.M. for this post because A: she introduced me to Trippy Text and B: she said I should use it to write my dissertation.